Use of the n-word on Twitter spiked in the UK when Tammy Abraham and Paul Pogba missed penalties, analysis of Twitter has revealed

Abraham and Pogba both missed penalties for their clubs over the last 10 days.

The misses resulted in a barrage of racist abuse directed at the Chelsea and Manchester United players on social media.

The abuse has caused outrage, with the use of the n-word being one of the terms highlighted.

The word does get used on Twitter in the UK all the time, but analysis by data journalist David Dubas-Fisher shows how the number of tweets with the term spiked when the two players missed their respective penalties.

Analysis of Twitter showed peaks in racist abuse in the last ten days

The largest spike, by far, was on August 14 when Tammy Abraham missed his penalty for Chelsea in the UEFA Super Cup.

Paul Pogba’s miss against Wolves in the Premier League saw the next largest spike, on August 19.

Not all of the tweets using the n-word were abuse directed at the players.

Some were people using the word to criticise people using the word.

The tweets used in this analysis have been collected using Twitter’s API with a restriction to only collect tweets geo-tagged in the UK.

The number of tweets using the n-word directed at the two players could therefore be much higher.

Tammy Abraham of Chelsea missed the final penalty in the penalty shoot out following the UEFA Super Cup match between Liverpool and Chelsea at Vodafone Park on August 14, 2019 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)

It’s also restricted to just bring back tweets from the last 10 days, so it’s not possible to look at a longer trend.

Twitter have now reportedly agreed to meet with Manchester United and Kick It Out.

It said in a statement: "We're fully aware of and share the concerns surrounding the online racist abuse towards certain footballers in the UK over recent days," the statement read.

"We strongly condemn this unacceptable behaviour, and have now permanently suspended a series of accounts for violating our Hateful Conduct Policy. We're proactively monitoring the conversation online and will continue taking robust action on any account which violates our Rules.

"This is a societal issue and requires a societal response. This is why we maintain a dialogue with both the PFA and Kick It Out and are committed to working together to address abusive online and racist behaviour across the industry. We continue to liaise closely with our partners to identify meaningful solutions to this unacceptable behaviour - both offline and on."